


With each word say yes

by la_dissonance



Category: 4th Man Out (2015)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Coming Out, Drunken Kissing, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 19:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9137662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_dissonance/pseuds/la_dissonance
Summary: If Chris already kissed him once to prove a point, maybe he can be convinced to do it again. All Adam has to do is not mess it up this time.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently writing 7000+ words of 4th Man Out for Yuletide was not enough to get all my Chris/Adam feels out; that movie was _so clearly_ supposed to be a bros in love story. I've watched the movie about 3 times by now but am still a bit fuzzy on the geography of the Ortus' back yard; if there is not in fact a lake there, please pretend there was. 
> 
> The fic involves drunkenness and the consequent lowering of inhibitions, but no one does anything they don't want to do. 
> 
> Many thanks to [Seascribe](http://archiveofourown.org/users/seascribe) for dragging me into this fandom in the first place, cheerleading, catching typos, and assuring me that this may be sappy, but not too sappy to post. Any remaining errors are completely my own. 
> 
> Title is from [Each Works](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoPYGYiNQbI) by Colour Revolt.

"You should kiss me again," Adam says, rolling the words around in his mouth as he says them, getting a taste for the way they sound. He and Chris are still lying in the same spot on the bank where they landed hours earlier. The party's ebbed and flowed around them, and they've become more and more horizontal each time one of them got up for drinks. Adam's feeling good and buzzed — not quite drunk, but his limbs are all loose and heavy, sinking into the crisp July grass and the warm earth beneath. The stars overhead seem very close, and the voices of the last few knots of partygoers blend into a happy soup that sounds miles away. Across the lake, someone's setting off a few fireworks, all of them legal and low to the ground. Nothing like the show the Ortus put on earlier.

"What?" Chris says. There's a smile in his voice; he sounds about as buzzed as Adam feels. His head is heavy and warm on Adam's shoulder; Adam can't quite remember when he ended up there, but that must be why that arm is asleep. Well. Kind of asleep. He can still wiggle his fingers if he puts his mind to it. 

After a second, it filters into his consciousness that Chris had asked him something. "Hmm?" he says. His head feels muzzy and warm, incapable of holding more than half a thought at a time. It's a perfect match for the humid night air pressing around them. He finds his arm isn't so asleep that he can't bend his elbow, and then because his hand is there anyway, he starts combing his fingers through Chris's hair. It's weird how he can feel that the strands are there, but not, really. "What?" Adam asks again, when Chris doesn't say anything. "What were you saying?"

"No, you —" Chris lets out a huff, halfway between amused and frustrated. "What did _you_ say?"

Adam had been thinking about all the weeks without Chris, how boring and stupid they'd been, how this is the exact opposite of that and it should last forever. He can't remember which part of that he'd already vocalized, so he says, "I'm glad we're not in a fight anymore. I missed you, man." He's still playing with Chris's hair, and he still can't really feel it. He digs his fingertips in a little, rubbing Chris's scalp. Chris stretches up into it a little bit and gives a tiny sigh. 

"Are you putting the moves on me?"

"Hmm?"

"Adam."

"You're straight," Adam says, gesturing with the hand that isn't in Chris's hair. He has a whole, like...philosophy. About putting the moves on straight guys. Mostly out of self-preservation, but also because it seems like a giant hassle, way more trouble than it's worth for an outcome that's guaranteed to be boring and awkward at best. He's pretty sure he's explained the philosophy to Chris at some point, or at least he would have, if they'd been talking.

"That's not a no." Chris lifts his head up and looks into Adam's face. There are tiki torches set up around the edge of the yard but more than half of them are burned down by now and they're far away, anyway. Adam can only see the outline of Chris's head and the reflection of his eyes. Then a firework goes off and for a second Adam can make out Chris's expression of concentration, the little line between his brows. The sparks fall into the lake and go out one by one, leaving everything darker than before. Adam's arm is pins and needles all over; he imagines this must be what it feels like to be frozen and then defrosted.

"For science." Adam remembers his train of thought belatedly. "You should kiss me again for science." There's a little hitch in Chris's breathing. "I just think I may have jumped to conclusions, earlier," Adam says, groping around in his fuzzy brain for the logic that had felt so unassailable a minute ago. "Insufficient data? Science."

"How drunk are you right now?"

"Somewhat," Adam says, honestly. He's been way drunker before. He's been way more drunk with Chris before, even. 

Chris leans down and presses a chaste kiss to Adam's cheek, then nestles back into Adam's shoulder. Adam wraps his half-defrosted arm around Chris and pats his bicep absently. He can feel heat radiating out from the spot that Chris kissed, which is ridiculous. "Not like that," he says, quietly. "Like before. You...startled me before, I just said the first thing that came to mind without thinking."

"Not thinking isn't very scientific," Chris agrees.

"No," Adam says, with the sense that he's delivering the crushing final argument in a debate. He thinks he said the first thing that wouldn't send Chris and him into another fight for weeks; the first thing that would balance them out, the first thing that would put them back on familiar ground and keep Chris near. Things didn't seem quite so urgent now, with the night sky spread overhead like a giant blanket, and Chris's body a line of sticky heat along his side. 

"So," Chris echoes. He finds Adam's chin in the dark with his free hand, his fingertips tracing briefly over Adam's skin in a way that sets maybe a single butterfly off in Adam's stomach, a too-short flutter that Adam ignores, even though it's probably data he should be collecting. For science. Chris tips his head up, and tips Adam's head down, and kisses him soft and slightly off-center. 

"Well? Still like kissing your brother?" 

Adam presses his lips together, trying to sink the kiss into his skin for safekeeping. Chris is still here, doesn't seem to be close to running away or yelling or fighting. Adam goes out on a limb. "Hard to say."

"Hmm," Chris says, and then he kisses him again, without even being asked. He pulls away and makes a small questioning noise in the back of his throat. 

"I don't have a brother," Adam offers. Something light and airy is bubbling up in his chest; it might turn into a fit of giggles if he lets it out. "So I can't really say what kissing my brother would be like. Since I don't have one." 

"Sounds like you need more data," Chris says. He grins, and Adam can see his teeth flash lighter in the darkness. 

"Maybe just a couple more points." Adam wants — he wants. Chris rolls up onto his elbow, leaning over Adam and blocking out the stars; Adam's arm starts to prickle again as the blood flow is restored. "I'm going to give you my least brotherly kiss I know how to do," Chris warns. "Tell me how it stacks up." Chris strokes Adam's cheek and kisses him, _for real this time_ , Adam thinks, slow but building, licking his mouth open. Chris's arms are bracketing Adam's head now; he's rolled so that they're more chest to chest than side to side. If he would just let Adam take some of his weight, Adam could grind up, share some of this energy that's thrumming through his body. Instead it feels like Chris is hovering an inch away and Adam is pinned to the ground, all of his energy focused on their single point of contact, and none left over to make his limbs move. He kisses back hungrily, not wanting to waste an instant of whatever this is.

Chris breaks the kiss too soon, breathing heavily. "Verdict?"

"Not — not like brothers," Adam manages. "Maybe like really sexy brothers? But not like normal brothers." Not like he imagined kissing his own brother would be, anyway. Not like he'd imagined kissing Chris, his Straight Best Friend would be like, either, and he'd done a lot of that. He'd been trying to back off, lately, but the lifetime average was still high. Those fantasies lived in the same Physically Impossible but Too Hot Not to Contemplate corner of his brain as the one where Ewan McGregor hires him as an escort, and they always involve dramatic soap-opera style revelations and sparks flying and heated confessions. This just feels quiet and easy, and impossibly good. Adam isn't sure it's real.

"Told you so," Chris says. Adam wishes there was more light so he could see Chris's face. He sounds smug, happy. 

Chris hasn't pressed for an actual verdict yet, a cut and dried _thanks for donating your kisses to science, I have gathered enough evidence to support a conclusion and will stop getting The Gay all over you now,_ and it makes Adam brave. "One more," he says. His lips are still buzzing from the contact and the stars are spinning above them and if he can only have one thing, he'll take this. Chris makes a small sound, indecipherable, and kisses Adam again. Adam meets him halfway this time, grabbing handfuls of his t-shirt and dragging him down, hooking his foot around Chris's ankle until Chris lets go of the distance he'd been holding and they slot together. Chris gasps and Adam freezes, worried he's gone and made it too real for whatever ridiculous plausible deniability game they're playing here, but Chris rolls his hips and grabs a handful of Adam's hair and does something _filthy_ with his tongue, so wherever the _too real_ line is, it's not here.

Chris breaks the kiss to breathe. He says something that sounds like, "I fucking love science," but kisses Adam's neck before he can process it, and then Adam says, "Just," and Chris's mouth is on his before he can finish the thought. They keep going back and forth until they've run out of any excuses and all plausible deniability, and then they keep going anyway.

At one point a pair of footsteps pass close by; Nick's voice says, "Chris??" and then "I _called_ it!" 

They break apart and Chris flops onto his back on the grass next to Adam; Adam gives Nick the finger and Chris laughs.

"What the fuck, Nick," Chris yells. His voice is all rough and wrecked. Adam wants to jump his bones. 

"Come on, you said we were going," says whoever he's with, and they move off.

"Get a room!" Nick calls out, goodnaturedly. 

A car door sounds in the distance and they're alone again with the scratchy grass and the lake and the crickets. Adam feels like this might have jarred whatever weird out-of-body moment the universe was having back into place, but for the sake of science, he tests the hypothesis by rolling half onto Chris and burying his face in the side of his neck. Chris just sighs a little and lets his legs fall open, threads his hand through Adam's hair, so Adam feels emboldened to mouth at the salty skin of Chris's neck, work his way up Chris's jaw and suck at Chris's bottom lip until he lets him in. After a few minutes Chris is grinding almost constantly against Adam's thigh, and in the back of Adam's mind he starts to think that maybe they should get a room.

"I'm not sleeping out here in the Ortus' back yard," Chris says after an indeterminate time.

They help each other to their feet and then don't fully let go. The world doesn't sway as much as Adam was expecting it to; they've been out here long enough that he's started to sober up without even realizing it. Adam has his arm slung over Chris's shoulders and holds on less for balance and more for the sense that if they never break contact, this doesn't have to end.

All good things inevitably end, though. "I thought you were straight," Adam says as they walk out to the street. 

Chris shrugs. "Me too." 

Adam tries not to feel crestfallen, and fails. "Okay," he says.

"What's that mean?"

"It means I'm kind of pissed you would have let me make out with you for half the night if you weren't into it. But just — I can't tell you who you are. So. Okay."

"I _thought_ ," Chris clarifies, and Adam feels a whole flock of butterflies erupt in his stomach. 

"For real?"

Chris wraps his arm around Adam's waist and squeezes. "Come on, man, you know I'd never do you like that. That was me being really, really into it."

"Oh," Adam says. He feels more disoriented now than the entire time he and Chris were making out and making unfunny scientific method jokes. "For how long?"

Chris squints up at the streetlight ahead. "Since that night I freaked out when I thought you were making a pass at me, probably."

That's...a lot to take in. "Are you sure?" Adam asks. He could kick himself. So much for using his own awkward coming out experience to become a more supportive friend.

They come to a stop at the sidewalk. "I could, um, stand to explore the idea a bit more," Chris says. His voice is all bravado but Adam's known him long enough to see that it's only the thinnest veneer. 

"I could help with that," Adam says, very quietly. They just spent over an hour lying on top of each other, sharing bodily fluids. This shouldn't be so hard. "Or we could call it a night, talk about this later," Adam says, when Chris doesn't say anything right away. It's only fair.

Chris looks up and says in a rush, "No, let's go to your place and do gay stuff."

"Awesome," Adam says. "I walked here, though." He can feel a grin starting to tug at the corners of his mouth.

"I took a cab." Chris falls into step beside Adam. "Probably neither of us should be driving right now, anyway." 

Adam grins and kisses Chris, right there under the street light where the Ortus and their neighbors and anyone could see, if they'd been awake. "Let's go and be not-straight together."


End file.
